Darkness Falls - Hardcover

Murphy, Margaret

4.06

830 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312328516 ISBN 13: 9780312328511

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2004

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British barrister Clara Pascal stars in Darkness Falls and she has everything. A high-flying attorney and devoted mother, she was envied and admired by her peers. Now, robbed of everything that gave her life meaning, she lies chained to the stone wall of a cold, dark cellar, deprived of food and rest. Most frightening, though, her kidnapper refuses to communicate with her, even to tell her what he wants.

As Clara passes from fear to anger to despair in her dark prison, Detective Inspector Steve Lawson leads the Cheshire police team working to find her. Is her abduction the work of a random maniac? A released criminal taking his revenge on the lawyer who sent him to jail? An obsessed stalker? Is it a last, spectacular bid for freedom by Casavettes, the ruthless drug baron she was prosecuting? Even her husband is not above suspicion.

The police team frantically knocks on doors, follows bare wisps of leads, bullying, cajoling, and begging witnesses for help, but it seems that Clara Pascal has disappeared without a trace.

And Clara, at last, begins to suspect why her jailer has kept her alive so far....

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About the Author:

Margaret Murphy is the author of seven novels. Goodnight My Angel was shortlisted for the First Blood award for debut crime novels. She lives in England.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* This stunning British suspense story will keep readers edgy and guessing until the very end. It opens with a cheerfully frantic domestic scene of Clara Pascal-- prosecuting counsel, wife, mother, and seemingly typical thirtysomething career-home juggler--trying to get to chambers on time while answering the demands of her daughter, excited and clingy on her ninth birthday. Two chapters later, Counsel Pascal is chained to a wall in a stranger's pitch-dark cellar. She is anything but a passive victim, however, as she uses her formidable argumentation skills to keep herself alive. Murphy ably spins several plot lines and points of view: Pascal's increasingly hopeless ordeal, the Chester Constabulary's efforts to find her, the musings of a serial killer. Everything hinges on motive. Was Pascal a random victim, or did her current case, the prosecution of a drug overlord, make her a target? Or is there something disjointed in her seemingly serene home life? Murphy's descriptions of the police procedure involved in recovering kidnap victims are sharply rendered, and her depiction of Pascal's courage is psychologically acute and moving. Perhaps the best feature of the novel, though, is the way tension is heightened through the juxtaposition of scenes. By setting the gut-wrenching events in the cellar against the painstaking detail gathering of the investigation--door-to-door inquiry, strategizing in the Incident Room--Murphy makes the reader squirm with impatience, willing the narrative forward. A first-rate chiller. Connie Fletcher
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